Mum’s turned the screws again re: the lack of blog entries, so here we go.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here in Cairo, which after the lazy first few weeks I spent here makes a nice change! I’ve been flitting around Cairo looking for more work and good experience with some success – I’m now copy editing for two publishers and a total of 6 magazines (after a recount) – as well as working plenty for Meedan in the absence of some of the regular team members and preparing my ever more lively Level 4 class for their final exam on Wednesday. I’ve enjoyed teaching more than I thought I would, I’m excited to have a new class at the ETC in September and in the meantime I’m going to be teaching a conversation class at the Coptic Cathedral here – somewhere I’ve never visited – for August .

Hopefully the break from the ETC will allow us to do some travelling this month, as Andrea has her summer vacation, and we have various plans of places and people to visit. I’m still hoping we can battle the heat and go to Siwa for the start of Ramadan, and it’d also be great to spend a more extended period back in Alex. Failing either of those, or perhaps in addition to, I’m always keen to get back to Dahab and at some point – though probably not this break – I need to go south to Aswan and Luxor. Something for the Autumn methinks.

For those of you interested and previously unaware, I have now officially graduated with a 1st in Middle Eastern and Modern European Languages (all of them..), congratulations to all my classmates, it made me extremely happy to see everyone in the graduation photos.

I promise that my next update will be less of a, well, update as to what I’m doing and will contain more interesting thoughts as to life in Egypt and my experience here: it’s tough to get all of that in whilst satisfying my mother’s thirst for news!

I do hope everyone’s well, particular thoughts go out to Submerge this week and my darling sister in Croatia. Don’t forget – you can always email me here and my Skype, for those of you with the technology is tom.trewinnard

Salam.

It's been an exciting, busy, tiring, stressful, fun, chaotic, excellent first month back here in Egypt. Four weeks have flown by and I feel like I've been here forever, and as a result of my ever increasingly busy schedule I've not posted an update for a little while. After spending a little while sitting on my hands, cleaning the flat and generally not doing very much - much needed after a busy last few weeks at uni, no regrets - I decided to be a little more pro-active with my job search and started ringing people, firing off more emails, and turning up unannounced at offices. Happily the first office I tried was that of the Episcopal Training Centre, a language centre run by the Diocese of Egypt. After explaining what I was looking for and what I was willing to do, I was hired as an English teacher by the director and have now been an English teacher for almost two weeks. As I'm new and my experience is limited, I only teach one class (6 hours a week) with a view to taking on more in September, but I've really enjoyed the first couple of lessons and the staff and students at the centre are extremely welcoming and accommodating.


Around the same time as I started at ETC, I received an email from a manager at Meedan, an exciting project I've been helping out with as a user for a little while, asking if I'd like to take a paid position as a content producer for the site. The best way to find out what Meedan does is to check out the site (http://www.meedan.net). My job is to produce the events you see on the homepage, involving a little writing and a lot of reading in English and Arabic. I'm fairly addicted to current affairs, particularly regarding the Middle East, and so the work I do for Meedan is enjoyable and doesn't neccesarily involve me leaving the flat (all things being well with my internet) which is important when it's 37-40C outside. Two jobs out of the blue in a week was nice, and I'd already set up meetings and applications elsewhere so, time allowing, I'll be able to take on more work in other places and gain as much and as varied an experience as I can.

I'm also enjoying church at All Saint's, Zamalek, where the congregation has been really welcoming and helpful in giving me hints and tips for places to try for work. Summer is a bit of a slow time at the church as the expats head home for the summer, but I'm hoping to get involved with what's going on as much as possible when things pick up!

This weekend Andrea and I are heading back to Alex which will be wonderful but difficult, particularly for Andrea. We still have lots of friends up there who we're both excited to see and I've started craving the excellent calamari I used to eat on an all too regular basis - I'll update next week.

Love to all, I know I need to send a few emails and ring some people - working on it :)


 

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